Trends in Drug Law Reform in Europe and Latin America

This presentation gives a short overview of legislative reforms in Europe and Latin America that provide lessons learned in practice about less punitive approaches intended to reduce drug-related harm to the individual and society.  Evidence suggests that fears that softening drug laws and their enforcement would lead to sharp increases in drug use, have proven untrue.

The center of gravity for these reforms has been Europe, as the European Monitoring Centre on Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) sums up: "The analysis of national drug strategies, legal literature, laws, and judicial practice, suggests that in several EU countries public action is based on a) a more powerful focus on treatment rather than on criminal punishment; b) on a sense of disproportion between custodial sentences (often involving a criminal record) and illicit use of drugs; and c) on the perception that cannabis is less dangerous to health compared to other drugs." Similar reforms have also taken place in Australia, Canada and within several states in the United States and increasingly in Latin America, the region potentially becoming a new center of gravity for advancing this type of reform in the near future.

Three important areas of reforms will be reviewed: 1) the decriminalization of drug use and of possession of drugs for personal consumption; 2) the proportionality of sentences; and 3) the reclassification of substances.